


toutes ces incohérences

by smithens



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Canon Era Fusion, Coming of Age, Developing Friendships, Friendship/Love, Gen, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-27 23:32:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8421934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: In the summer of the year 1825, Antonin et Gertrude Joly enrolled in a prominent medical school in Paris.
  By winter, Gertrude did not expect that come the following year they would still be listed on the roster.
Navigating the life of a Parisian medical student turns out to be more difficult than Joly and his daemon, Gertrude, expected. Fortunately, making friends is a much less complicated feat.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shellcollector](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellcollector/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for shell, who requested a daemon-style AU for a fan exchange earlier this year. this has been in the works for a little while, and it will definitely be chaptered (much more than the following is written!) but I wanted to get the prologue up while I edit the forthcoming bits. (of course, knowing my track record with chaptered works...)
> 
> enjoy! :)

In the summer of the year 1825, almost at the age of twenty, Antonin et Gertrude Joly enrolled in a prominent medical school in Paris; the immediately following autumn, he began his studies. Gertrude, of course, accompanied him in the endeavor.

At the lycée, Joly had been an exceptional student of the sciences, with a hearty interest in biology and chemistry both, but what he possessed in his knowledge of the natural world he lacked entirely with regards to arithmetic. Gertrude herself quite preferred rhetoric, and so together they made a well-adjusted team, so long as no calculations were involved.

On account of the traits which Antonin’s parental daemons possessed, she was more traditional than he, perhaps more feminine (as was the way of things) and more literary. On account of his own upbringing - well, on account of God knows what, to others, but she of course felt it truly just as he did - Antonin was more innovative than she, scientific, boyish. Together they shared eccentricities of personality and of habit, and perhaps they were prone to anxiety - but good humor and cheer served them both better than to worry. As human and daemon should, they complemented one another.

In Antonin’s teenage years they had their first prolonged disagreement: upon Gertrude’s inevitable settling. As the sole and final condition of university matriculation for students "of ordinary potential", the transformation was paramount to success. But when Joly was graduated from boarding school at seventeen, he and Gertrude had not yet experienced the change. He received a place in the class, but postponement was necessary. Term began without them.

For Gertrude it was agony, the waiting - and for so much longer than their peers!, but through their feelings and discussions she knew Antonin did not look forward to her permanent state. It was a gateway to places and lives otherwise inaccessible, and that was all that appealed to him. She took the form of a rabbit, in those months, and occasionally a cat, so as not to distress him with switching.

Shortly after Antonin's eighteenth birthday, however, it happened: just as the daemon of his mother had foretold, Antonin's anxieties over permanency washed away. Gertrude's settled form was not one she recalled ever sharing with Antonin: very small; with soft fur across the body, which had a warm brown color excepting a yellow patch across her underside; large, drooping ears; a sort-of mousy face; her tail prehensile and fluffy; and - most unusually - a membrane connecting the limbs, allowing for a motion in the air similar to flight - but only if she first leapt from Antonin's shoulder.

And so it was done: she was satisfied, content, complete, with her transformation. Antonin seemed to lose much of his adolescent unease overnight. The best part, of course, was then the potential to make good on the offers from Paris and Lyon.

As soon as possible after the settling, his parents notified the institution of choice, in Paris, of course. The deans at the medical school deemed her settled form suitable to a medical disposition, and thus, they headed north.

That was autumn.

By winter, Gertrude did not expect that come the following year they would still be listed on the roster.


	2. I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)

"Monsieur Joly, whilst you are a pupil in this institution, you must know that I do not give credence where it is undeserved, as is the case with these ideas of daemon magnetism. Before your birth, but not before mine, as you would know if you cared to read upon your peculiar interest, the Faculty of Medicine at large determined by commission that the treatments of Deslon were utter -"

"But - my questions pertained rather -"

"I shall not take more questions nor disrespect from you to-day, Monsieur Joly, you have distracted your peers well enough with them each. Now, to carry on about the humours - "

The implication that his distractions were unwanted, thought Joly, was not true - he had asked approximately three questions, all consecutive, and his peers in the lecture hall not seated immediately to his sides seemed grateful for the deviation from the lecture content, no matter the opinion on the subject at hand. (Joly had noticed that it took a great deal to anger this lecturer, that his daemon - a brightly colored lizard, always silent at his neck - seemed never to agitate. He had vowed to himself never to distress them; he was not happy to think that he had failed.) Nonetheless, he was discouraged by the outright dismissal.

Gertrude touched her nose to his chin from her place at rest upon his shoulder. She did not need to inform him aloud that she had _told him so_ , for he felt that very acutely, but her comfort was constant nonetheless.

He shifted in his seat, made notes in his pocketbook, and remained silent for the rest of the lecture, taking comfort in Gertrude's pressure against his neck.

Toward the end of the hour, however, as the lecture was ending and the pupils began to grow restless even through the ten minutes allowed for inquiry, a student in the front of the hall continued in Joly's stead:

"Professor, while we've the time, might I inquire further as to your rejection of the question posed which regarded the work of Franz Mesmer?"

Joly recognized the student - he was two classes above Joly's own, yet somehow seemed to appear in first year lectures, and in intellectual meetings outside of the medical school. He seemed always to have commentary or questions on the subject at hand, and his perception among the medical students in his class  who knew of him was rather polarized. Joly had never spoken to him, as he was certainly intimidating, but he respected him regardless.

By custom he sat in the front row, at the far side of the hall, due to the remarkable size of his daemon - a beautiful tawny bear, close to his height and certainly more massive than he, who spoke both with other students' daemons and their human counterparts directly - but given his demeanor, Joly suspected that even with a smaller counterpart he would be the sort of man who tried to sit in the front anyway, although the space accommodation would not pertain to him. At that moment, his daemon lay beside him, even as he stood to make his voice heard, but when Joly looked to her, she was staring directly at him.

Gertrude squeaked softly and nudged his ear; he colored and turned his attentions forward.

"That is to say," the student continued, with a steady, impartial tone, "in my understanding, the work of Mesmer's followers has gained great traction in recent years, among men of the faculties which you reference and even well outside our own circles of medicine. Across France, certainly in England, perhaps across Europe at large. Indeed, it is my understanding that not twenty years ago, the Marquis de Puységur still retained his broad following; under the Empire -"

"Monsieur Combeferre, I do not invite your presence at my lectures in order to hear you attempt to teach me a history which you did not live."

"Ah, yes, forgive me, Professor. I shall be more brief: in the language of science, which you teach us exceptionally, might you detail for us more objectively your dissent? Perhaps more specifically regarding the earlier student's desire for clarification upon the literature in question? Thank you."

He sat back down.

The pause which followed his words was poignant: the rustling of papers ceased, bored chatter halted, impatient wings stilled.

Joly shrunk into his seat.

"If you do not find my lectures sufficient, Monsieur Combeferre, you may cease attending them," replied the lecturer, coolly.

"I understand, Professor. Pardon me," said Monsieur Combeferre, quite nonchalant, and though he remained seated, his daemon had stood. Upon the professor's shoulders, his lizard daemon flared around her neck.

Gertrude let out another squeak; Joly stared at his knees. He started to gather his things, making a great effort to be quiet. (The rest of the students had already done so.)

"You are all dismissed," the lecturer snapped, and that was that: with the desire of so many to be out of the hall, the tension dissolved rapidly.

Joly left the lecture hall in the same manner as his peers: quietly and with great haste. Gertrude tucked herself beneath the collar of his coat, and - fortunately free of lectures for the remainder of the day - together they set out for their apartment.

\- - -

In the following weeks, Joly did his best to avoid ever needing to interact with Monsieur Combeferre in close quarters again. He reasoned that, if the man himself did not remember him, his daemon certainly would; though Gertrude took every opportunity to tell him this furtiveness was ridiculous and that the other student was two years ahead and clearly thought their comments - even misunderstood as they were - had merit, she conceded that his daemon was indeed quite intimidating.

But, he knew he could not avoid a confrontation with his classmate forever - even after his altercation with the first-year lecturer, Monsieur Combeferre continued to attend his courses from time to time in a cordial fashion. To his immense discomfort, on one occasion Joly had sat two rows directly behind him during a public lecture at the Collège Royal: his escape after all had been said and done was quick, and Gertrude had nipped at his ear on the way out for getting carried away.

Such occurrences then became so common that Joly worried he had received a curse of ill luck, and this worry was only exacerbated by recent events.

At some time in between his days at the medical school and attempts at sleep, he had met and accidentally befriended a man who apparently had his own curse of misfortune. The man was named, through some process or another, Lesgle, and the accident of their meeting turned out to be very pleasant, but upon realising that the tales of ill luck were no hyperbole, Joly had become more aware of his various encounters with fate, and steadily more prone to worrying over it all, also.

...just as he was, as his studies progressed, steadily becoming more aware of all of the little tics he possessed and the syndromes which they could indicate. (Gertrude told him often he needed to reduce his self-awareness, whatever she meant by that, but much of the time it was her own nervousness giving him trouble. When he told her so, she had squeaked at him indignantly, and they had been silent at one another for an entire minute before it became unbearable.)

Perhaps Lesgle and his daemon, called Euphrosyne - a curious creature with a long tail, long body, long snout, and further long tongue, with fur enough to make up for her counterpart’s lack of hair on his head - had passed their bad luck onto him. If a new friend were benefiting from his misfortune, Joly wouldn’t mind so much, so long as he had the opportunity to return to his normal, mostly pleasant life when the curse had passed.

Yet, between his awkward encounters with young women, imbecilic questions in lecture halls, and woefully still developing ability to hold his liquor, most unfortunate of all was that Joly’s concerns over his inevitable confrontation with the upperclassman M. Combeferre came to fruition in such a way that he realized he had been wasting his time worrying in the first place:

He had thought, and Gertrude in her own way had certainly helped him do so, that their fated meeting could have very well happened anywhere - but what if it just so happened to occur in a crowded corridor after a popular lecture, and was cause for spectacle? What if it happened _in_ a lecture, and Joly found his ideas yet again misunderstood? Whichever way the run-in occurred, it would surely be unfortunate. It would be evidence enough that whichever curse he was under would not leave him as soon as he hoped, and Lesgle’s newfound prosperity would not be enough to return him his cheerful disposition.

But - as Joly ought to have become accustomed to, he thought - the encounter, when it did happen, was  mostly private, thoroughly enjoyable, and entirely (and fortunately!) the opposite of that which apprehension had lead him to expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> clarification for those who need it:
> 
> Joly's daemon, Gertrude, is a yellow-bellied glider possum (endemic to Australia) ; Lesgle's daemon, Euphrosyne, is a Giant Anteater, endemic to Central and South America.
> 
> Combeferre and his daemon, having not been officially met yet, can remain a mystery. :)


End file.
